And since when did coyotes prefer sucking blood to eating raw meat?
They didn't, but there was no other explanation. Yes, I reported seeing the medallion. I reported being thrown against a tree, too. These reports were largely dismissed. Sure, my detective friends joked lightheartedly about being attacked by a vampire, but the jokes were forgotten as soon as they were made.
The attack made the local papers, and there was a witch hunt on the local coyote population. Many were regrettably killed.
My neck and shoulder had required hundreds of stitches. Doctors had spent hours on it. They were expecting serious issues with infection, and I was placed in a rigid neck brace. Two days later they released me.
And that's when things started getting weird.
The morning after I was released, I noticed two things: the incessant itching under my bandages had stopped, and I was experiencing no pain in my neck at all.
With Danny watching cartoons with little Anthony, then only two years old, and Tammy at school, I went into the bathroom and shut the door and took my first look under the bandages.
And what I saw was the beginning of my new life.
I was healed. I was impossibly healed. I was supernaturally healed.
I had been sitting on the edge of the bathtub with the bathroom door locked, when Danny knocked on the door and asked if everything was okay, and I said yes. But I wasn't okay. Something was wrong, horribly wrong.
He paused just outside the door, where I could clearly hear him breathing as if he was standing next to me. How could I hear him breathing from behind the door? And did I just hear him scratch himself? When he finally walked away, shuffling down the carpeted floor, I heard every step. Clearly. As if he been walking on hardwood floors.
Confused and alarmed, I crawled into the empty bathtub and hugged my knees tightly.
* * *
And later that day, as I nervously hid my healed wound from Danny - and alternately wondered why I was feeling a very strong need to stay away from direct sunlight - I also had my first craving for the red stuff.
What the hell was happening to me?
Chapter Twenty-one
From the sky, Jerry Blum's estate was easily one of the biggest for miles around. And in Newport Beach, that's saying something.
His estate was, in fact, an island all to itself, an island that was accessible via bridge from Balboa Island.
An island within an island. Cool beans.
Balboa Island wasn't a real island, though. It was just a long peninsula filled with inordinately large homes and hip bars and restaurants. I suppose calling it Balboa Long Peninsula just didn't quite have the same ring to it.
Still, those living on Balboa Island were living a lie.
Just sayin'.
Not so with Jerry Blum. He really did live on an island - an island all to himself, complete with a private bridge that arched from near the southern point of Balboa Island.
A handful of small planes buzzed around me, some beneath and some above. I doubted I was being picked up on any radar. A creature who didn't have a reflection, probably didn't return radar signals, either. And if a giant bat-like blip did show up on their radars, then that would certainly give the air traffic controllers something to chew on.
That, and nightmares.
I swept lower, tucking my arms in a little, angling down toward Jerry Blum's private island. Wind blasted me as I raced through the sky. A thin, protective film covered my eyes. Vampiric goggles.
Whoever had created this thing that I sometimes turn into had done a bang-up job. Someone, somewhere had put some serious thought into this thing.
Who that person was, I didn't know. Why I was created, I didn't know. From where this dark flying creature came from, I didn't know.
But I knew I wanted answers.
Someday, I thought.
For now, it was time to go to work.
Hey, even giant vampire bats have to make a living.
* * *
I found a large tree on the grounds and settled upon a thickish branch. From here, I had a good view of the rear and east side of the house.
Sometimes I wondered if I had really died that night six years ago. Maybe this was death. Maybe death was living out a nightmarish fantasy that couldn't possibly be real. Maybe death was full of wonder and fantasy.
The thick branch creaked under my considerable weight. How considerable? I didn't know, but if I had to guess, I would say that I weighed over five hundred pounds.
Big girl.
The massive estate was quiet, although men in shorts and Hawaiian shirts routinely walked the grounds. A high wall encircled the property, and barbed wire ran along the top of the wall. There were security cameras everywhere, but I didn't worry about security cameras. Two big Lincolns sat to either side of the main gate. No doubt men with guns sat in those cars. Beyond the backyard fence was the bay, and beyond that was Newport Beach itself. Wooden stairs led down from the backyard to a boat house and private pier. A sixty-foot yacht was anchored next to the boat house. The yacht looked empty, although there were a few lights on inside it here and there.
I sat unmovingly on the branch for a few more hours. My great, muscular legs never once went to sleep or needed adjusting. I suspected I could have sat perched like that all night. Or until the sun came up or until the branch snapped off. Whichever came first.
But Jerry Blum's house was quiet tonight. No doubt he was off somewhere honing his racketeering and murder skills. Perfecting the fine art of gangstering.
I'll be back, I thought, and leaped off the branch and shot into the air.
Chapter Twenty-two
I swooped around my minivan once, twice, waiting for a security guard to move on. When he finally did, I landed softly atop the rocky cliff nearby, tucking in my wings. As usual, my wings' thick, leathery membranes hung limply, this time in the dirt. And if I wasn't careful, I could step on my wings, which I had done before and it wasn't the most graceful thing to witness. A vampire stumbling on her own wings didn't exactly grace the covers of supernatural romance novels the world over.
With the salt-infused wind hammering me atop the cliff, the flame in my mind's eye appeared again. But this time a horrific creature wasn't standing in the flame. (Unless, of course, you asked my ex-husband.) No, instead, a naked woman was standing in the flame.
A cute little curvy woman with long black hair.
It was one of the few times I actually got to see myself without heavy make-up on. Granted, it was a smallish image of myself, and perhaps only an avatar of myself, but it was me and I always loved looking at it.
And I didn't look half bad. Personally, I think Danny is crazy. Think about it, he could have had a young-looking wife for the rest of his life, a wife who never aged. Granted every decade or so we would probably have to move and make completely new friends, and he would have to put up with my cold flesh, and the fact that I drink blood, but still....